The kitchen table: an event stage, meeting room and a lunch spot

Positives of WFH have been discussed for years: nearly a quarter of a million more UK workers started working remotely over the last decade. Over the past year, since the realisation that company offices could no longer host their entire workforce at the risk of employees safety – teams of all kinds have taken to a new rhythm at home. 

We’ve done our fair share of research around why the remote workforce needs an office to call home but until further notice, people’s homes will be the office. In light of this, team members have set-up workspaces to their best abilities, but one space in the house trumps them all: the kitchen table. 

For many teams around the world, within just a few weeks of working from home becoming the global status quo, the most dynamic and hybrid spot in the house has become the nucleus of the workplace, flipping the work life balance 180º. We’ve been asking ourselves how long this is likely to last, as whilst the events and conferences your company host have simply shifted from the physical world to the digital – the experience may not have been so seamless for the events team behind the production, or the marketing manager responsible for incentivising sign-ups to fill the attendee list.

That kitchen table at home is not only for breakfast with the kids, but for morning coffee catch ups with colleagues and a meeting room for client pitches before becoming a lunch spot for well, lunch. In the afternoon, it metamorphoses into an event stage for company conferences, an interview chair for the new hire and a remote collaboration room with the partnerships team. Come the end of the working day, we make way for a homework space for the kids and then finally (if we all haven’t yet commuted over to the sofa for an evening meal), a dinner table for the household to catch-up on everyone’s day. Have you thought about whether your people are working from home, or living at work? 

Now if you’re not exhausted from reading the above, then you’ll at least be rethinking the whole working from home situation – is it really sustainable long term? We all know that company perks have to adapt and that HR teams need to be more innovative to support the workforce from a distance. We’ve seen companies switch their corporate lunch time catering to meal delivery with food programs for employees, boosting productivity levels no matter where the team is working from. But have we asked our teams what they need and how they expect their employer to support them over this year? As HR managers, team leaders and business owners, if we stay ahead of our people’s needs, we’ll be more likely to see the working from home experiment as a normality that can adapt to all employees’ needs. 

No matter what role we play in the working world, we have all been tested on our adaptability, patience, resilience and innovative thinking the past year. Looking at how sustainable our current ways of working really are, starts with finding out from our workforce how they really feel. Finding ways to stay flexible and adapting to the changing needs of employees (and customers) throughout the pandemic and beyond is essential to making our policies durable, for the long run. We have asked our workforce to re-imagine spaces and how to work within them – it’s now time to recognise that giving up that kitchen table hasn’t been all that easy after all.

If you’re adapting to current changes and looking for a more sustainable solution for your employees, take a look at how Uber for Business can help you, help your people.